“Words only anger you,” said the astonished and half daunted seigneur.
“Such words as yours have been:” was replied. “What! do you expect to strike upon a bank where bees have settled, yet not be stung; or dream to be allowed to draw the bare hand, clasping down a sword, but not be wounded?”
“What shall I say, yet not offend you?” soothingly enquired Montigny.
“Say what you will,” the advocate continued: “what can be worse than what you have said already?”
“Hear me,” said the seigneur, in the manner of one who is going to make a confidential proposal: “Either remove your ward, and receive a compensation for her absence, or quickly marry her, and I will provide her with a dower.”
“Now you are indeed a generous gentleman,” said the advocate, smiling; “You must have built churches, surely, or founded hospitals, and always have dealt out dollars liberally to the deserving. But you are wealthy, and can do these things without being impoverished. It is fortunate that you are wealthy, for I shall accept of no paltry sum. Only imagine, to have to banish her; to quench, or to remove, the very beam that fills my life with light. You must be liberal, if you would have me exile her Come, sign me a bond for what I shall demand.”
“You are in haste,” observed the seigneur, somewhat startled at the advocate catching so readily at the bait; but the latter was ready with his reply:
“Because your son may now be at Stillyside, and, whilst we are haggling, may carry off my ward,—or I might change my mind,” he answered.
“And I, too, may change mine,” was the rejoinder.
“Why, then, we are quits;” observed the advocate carelessly, and as if all parley were at an end; “we are as we were, and, for the young ones, they are as they were; but if I know the force of youthful blood, you, with all your endeavours, will not be able long to keep them apart.”